The Man who sold the World
by Rycitia
Summary: Not really a songfic. L is dead and Light is visited by ghosts. slight LxLight, character death


Death Note isn't mine, and _The man who sold the World_ belongs to David Bowie. If you own it, listen to it while reading it. I did, the whole time. And now it's stuck in my head. Anybody out there willing to make me listen to _Fashion_?

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**The Man who sold the World**

Light sat quietly, not quite listening to Matsuda rambling about his new suspicion concerning this person or that fellow. Sometimes you just had to drown him out.  
He glanced over to the calendar, where Matsuda had helpfully circled the date. With a thick red pen. Light frowned. A thick red pen wasn't something he'd associate with a deceased L.  
Naturally, they would visit L's grave. They would grieve and express their sorrow and then they would go back to headquarters and resume working. Light did not consider it worth the effort, neither did he need a thick red pen stroke to remind him of L's death date. In his opinion, one did not have to visit graves where dead bodies were merrily decomposed by sedulous bacteria. Not when one held conversation with the dead every second Sunday or so.

The first time a ghost, or something anybody but Light would have called a ghost, came to visit him, he was surprised, to put it mildly. Of course, dead souls had to go somewhere, and if they weren't that dead and still felt the need to roam earth's surface, why did they have to penetrate him?  
Ryuk explained – hysterically amused – that because of his deep connection with the world of the dead thanks to the death note, he radiated a feeling of home for these dead.  
But apart from the occasional vengeful soul who left some unfinished business on earth, he did not mind them much. They usually chatted away with Ryuk, who was delighted to give them directions (which usually were false, just for his entertainment) to heaven. But after L died, Light was half expecting him to visit. He had, after all, some serious unfinished business left, and that, as Light was now very well informed, usually kept souls from going strait to heaven or hell or whatever they believed to happen after death. Light had been surprised to learn that your afterlife depended a lot on your believes. It made him nervous.

And L visited him indeed. Light was standing on the balcony of his room, when he felt the slight, cold prickling on his back. Wandering souls announced themselves like that, he knew by now. He turned around, seeing something akin to mist or dust sweeping towards him. This was a ghost, soul, whatever. And, Light chuckled, it seemed to have a bend back and radiated a sugary scent. Interesting, how habits of when you were alive continued when you were dead.  
When L reached him, Light had the familiar feeling of the souls creeping into your eyeballs, so you were able to see them. He blinked a bit, and then, L was standing, or rather hunching in front of him, just like, well, when he was still alive.  
Light, well-mannered as he was, offered his guest a cup of tea. L crooked his head in what nobody else could have interpreted as yes, and Light knew how many sugar cubes to put in, because he had made tea so often for L and he was sure his preferences had not changed because of something so minor as his own death.  
They sat on the balcony, L taking sips of his sugar with a drop of tea, and Light munching away on salty chips, because they were the only things he was sure of not to be eaten away from under his nose.  
Quietly, they conversed, about the ongoings of the investigation, L cracking a smile at how clueless Matsuda still was, frowning at how clingy Misa grew, smiling at Mr. Yagamis forceful strides ahead, chuckling about Mogi having spoken for the first time in about three weeks. Light told him how Ryuk tried stealing apples when his mother was in the room, and how she suddenly had a very realistic hallucination of an apple floating in mid-air. L grinned, and added after each finished story, "I hope they find out soon that you're Kira."  
To which Light responded, the slightest of smirks on his face, "Justice will prevail, and remember who won." Then L would say "I won." Light would smile. "Correct."  
L would frown. "But unfortunately, you're the only one who knows, for I died. Such a pity."  
Then Light would tell him another story, amused and happy to have a worthy rival. His mother asked him the next morning why there was a cold cup of tea on his balcony, and since when did he add sugar?

When L visited the next time, he told the younger man he had seen a few other people who spoke to ghosts. But, he set firm eyes on Light, "They are so boring." Light grinned, wishing to hug the something-like-a-ghost-creature, as he had done so many times before, secretly, in his mind, in sleep.  
L said it again and again, sitting in a room full of investigator he used to direct and lead, next to Light, who was the only one capable of seeing him and content with that, he repeated, that "Light-kun is my first friend. My best friend, as well. Come to think of it, he is all to me."

_We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when  
__Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend  
__Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes  
__I thought you died alone, a long long time ago_

Light looked at the calendar again, glanced at the bustling ex-policemen, eager to find prove for Kiras identity, eager to hand it over to Light who would methodically erase any and every prove that Kira could be him. He knew he was something like a god, for he had the power over life and death, for he was able to twist and turn fate as he pleased. All because a shinigami chewing on apples in the background was bored one day.

Fate, as Light mused by himself, was not so powerful as most people tended to think. He himself like the idea of everything leading into each other. One thing happened and opened the possibility of another thing to happen, but it needn't necessarily follow. This was the mystery of choice: you never knew how many more possibilities might have been had you not made a decision.  
This theory was for one reason alone so very appealing to Light: _he_ had a choice. Thus, he had power, he was in control and this gave him more power. If he wanted to, he could, by using his abilities, sell a glass stone for a diamond. If he just _chose_ to see a diamond in the glass, it could become very precious. And psychological knowledge of the human's mind did the rest. Even if L had won – for he had discovered Kira's identiy and had been right all the time, and Light did not deny him his victory – Light got to play on, for he had overpowered L. He had everything in his hands, and this made him a loser, but the best loser ever.

_Oh no, not me  
__I never lost control  
__You're face to face  
__With The Man Who Sold The World_

Light looked at the calendar. This was the third time Matsuda had ignored his wish to use a thin black pen to circle the date, and had used a thick red one again. Light was getting irritated with this notorious habit. L just huffed his shoulders. To him, it didn't' matter, but, as Light quietly pointed out, because his father and Mogi were in the same room, "You're not alive anymore, you're allowed to not give a damn!", in such an angry voice L almost grinned. Sweet, how Light-kun got so excited over so little matters. And he knew, Light-kun did that "Just because it is connected to my ex-existence?", but, of course, Light-kun caught the double meaning even if he struggled to hide his smirk.

So it was three years ago and soon it would be four years ago, then five years, and Light was almost a god, in his opinion. He regarded himself in the mirror, taken aback by the glint in his eyes that screamed "I'm Kira!" to anybody who cared to look closely enough, but fortunately, L had been the only one to take so much of him in. L stood by wearing a sad face, because if this was a god, gods were insane. He observed sadly, very sadly, that Light was going mad.

Light himself knew of course, not only because L had told him so. Sometimes he even suspected he had some sort of split personality: Light Yagami and Kira, and in recent times, Kira tended to overpower him somewhat. But he was in control, he never lost control.

L sometimes did not visit him for a long time, and Light found himself wishing that the other were there, but you can't chain yourself to a ghost, or something like a ghost, even if you were a god, or something like a god and wished to terribly.

When L showed up, the circle with the damned thick red pen had been made for the six time, and Light was desperate. He tried to throw himself a L, but he landed quite hard on the cold floor, and all L did was stare silently and sadly at him, because "I'm dead and but a little cloud of mist. You can't touch me." He saw that Light was crazy, and he saw that Light knew it and was therefore desperate. Light tried to grasp for thin air once again and, "I need you." echoed in his head over and over again.  
L tried to hug the man, but all Light felt was cold, and a bit of condensation on his sin, and he whined, "Keep me sane!" for all to hear, admitting defeat, because that day L died, Light had lost. Kira was the winner shining in his eyes, carefully and properly taking apart what was and made every ounce of being of Light Yagami, killing his father and snickering away in the depths of his mind.

Ryuk watched interested and a bit uncertain, for a situation like this had never occurred before to him ever. He knew of souls who offered support, and he knew of humans who went insane very slowly and very logically, but he did not know what to make of a person that was partly insane and partly dead trying to cling to mist and a voice only he and the shinigami, if he strained his ears very much, could hear. He had always known the death note could do devastating things to humans, but the point was that Light did these things to himself and L steadily took little bits of his sanity, nip by nip, as if Light were of a cup of tea.

One day, Light turned to L and asked, for the fifth time this day, "Am I crazy?", just to have his point confirmed, and exhaled happily when L nodded, then turned back to work, while L contemplated if it was time to inform Ryuk that Light was no longer alive.

_I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home  
__I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed  
__I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here  
__We must have died a long, a long long time ago_

When Matsuda circled the date with the thick red pen for the seventh time, Light wasn't able to bother about it, because that was in Matsuda's private home and Light was strapped to a seat, awaiting a doctor or a needle or anything really, but he could not see nothing, for tears and blood clouded his vision. Soft murmurs filled the air, voices that belonged to men who had seen many mentally disturbed, though not as many as Ryuk, who was stealing a pen from one of the doctors. It was a thin black pen, and L smiled a bit when Ryuk showed it to him.

Light screamed, just because that's what the crazy do, but since he knew he was insane, it was no fun and he felt alone, alone with Kira who was furious about the prospect of being killed. Forcing his eyes open, he blinked, making out blurry figures in the room. A thick glass wall separated him and the doctors and L had not bothered to properly step through it, but since he only existed within Lights mind, it was no problem. Behind the glass, journalists and Sayu were standing, regarding the white room. One of those reporters he had seen on TV a few days ago, he had excitedly announced that unbelievably, the chief investigator of the Kira chase had admitted to being Kira himself, and naturally was taken to a mental asylum, because the poor man must be out of his mind. Light almost grinned at seeing Ryuk trying to make the pen work.

L took a few steps towards him, sighting because "I watched this all." and it hurts a bit to see your one best friend, your everything to you go very logically and very determined insane. He had watched how Light threw himself against the wall, had watched him slitting open his skin in order to cut Kira out if him, had watched him attempting to write Kira's name into the death note, but failing miserably because Kira was himself and one part of his soul was already dead, well, as good as dead. L winced when Light gave in, screaming and bloody and crying, he clenched his fists when Kira reduced Light Yagami to a fragmented mind that had no control over nothing, not even his tears. L cried a bit, metaphorical tears, because it was partly his fault – he had won, and this should have saved Light and Kira should have been extinguished, but L died, and therefore Light had lost, giving way to Kira.

Ryuk finally had shook the pen enough to produce black blots all over the opened page of the death note and the cloak of a doctor who faintly wondered whether or not he had washed his cloak the day before. He gave a last look at Light, saw the lifespan above his head, decided that the man could not bear one more hour and wrote down, not very neatly, but still legible, _Light Yagami_.

It took L exactly thirty-eight seconds to find Light in the depths of these eyes that almost only consisted of Kira, and when he found him, he used the remaining two seconds to hold the gaze, because finally, he was able to gain his prize, which was rightfully his, since he had won a long, long time ago. And, contrary to Light, he had never lost control of the game of life, but being dead makes that a lot easier.

Light felt something hitch in his chest, and suspected that this was a heart attack, and wondered idly if one could sell a glass stone as a diamond to a shinigami, but then he realised there was no need to, because L was staring at him, through the twitching mass of Kira and the sticky blood from his wounds and the cold tears. Probably, Light suspected, L knew how difficult it was to find the way out of one's body, and he gladly accepted the helping hand. Probably, while he closed his eyes, Kira died too, and the thought gave him some relief.

There was mist and dust and more white than the room even contained, and though Ryuk had said that people who used the death note went neither to heaven or hell, L smiled serenely, and more was not to be expected from his afterlife, taking into account his believes and hopes. Light knew that L was aware of the great fact of being as well: life is but a glass stone, until you sell it as a diamond.

_Who knows? not me  
__We never lost control  
__You're face to face  
__With the Man who Sold the World_

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Thanks for reading. Critisism is always appreaciated. 


End file.
